Cy Coleman (June 14, 1929 - November 18, 2004) was an American composer, songwriter, and jazz pianist.

He was born Seymour Kaufman on June 14, 1929, in New York City to Eastern European Jewish parents, and was raised in the Bronx. His mother, Ida (née Prizent) was an apartment landlady and his father was a brickmason. He was a child prodigy who gave piano recitals at Steinway Hall, Town Hall, and Carnegie Hall between the ages of six and nine. Before beginning his fabled Broadway career, he led the Cy Coleman Trio, which made many recordings and was a much-in-demand club attraction.

Despite the early classical and jazz success, he decided to build a career in popular music. His first collaborator was Joseph Allen McCarthy, but his most successful early partnership, albeit a turbulent one, was with Carolyn Leigh. The pair wrote many pop hits, including "Witchcraft" and "The Best Is Yet To Come." One of his instrumentals, "Playboy's Theme," became the signature music of the regular TV shows and specials presented by Playboy, and remains synonymous with the magazine and its creator, Hugh Hefner.

Teddi King (September 18, 1929 – November 18, 1977) was an American jazz and pop vocalist. Born Theodora King in Boston, Massachusetts on September 18, 1929, she won a singing competition hosted by Dinah Shore at Boston's Tributary Theatre, later beginning work in a touring revue involved with "cheering up the military in the lull between the Second World War and the Korean conflict." Improving her vocal and piano technique during this time, she first recorded with Nat Pierce in 1949, later recording with the Beryl Booker trio and with several other small groups from 1954-1955 (recordings which were available on three albums for Storyville). She then toured with George Shearing for two years beginning in the summer of 1952, and for a time was managed by the famed George Wein. King later began performing for a time in Las Vegas.

Ultimately signing with RCA, she recorded three albums for the label, beginning with 1956's Bidin' My Time. She also had some minor chart success with the singles "Mr. Wonderful" (which made the Top 20 in 1956), "Married I Can Always Get" and "Say It Isn't So" (both of which made the Hot 100 from 1957–1958). Her critically praised 1959 album All the Kings' Songs found her interpreting the signature songs of contemporary male singers like Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole (the "kings" of the title). In the 1960s, she opened the Playboy Club, where she often performed. After developing lupus, she managed to make a brief comeback with a 1977 album featuring Dave McKenna, and with two more albums recorded for Audiophile released posthumously. She eventually died of the disease on November 18, 1977. King's style, influenced by Lee Wiley, Mildred Bailey and Mabel Mercer, has won her a small but devoted cult following.

Fiona Apple McAfee Maggart (born September 13, 1977) is an American singer-songwriter and pianist. Apple met international acclaim for her 1996 debut album, Tidal, which was a critical and commercial success. At the age of nineteen she received a Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for the single "Criminal" from that album in 1998.

After Tidal, Apple released the critically acclaimed, though less commercially successful albums, When the Pawn... (1999) and Extraordinary Machine (2005). A perceived shelving of Extraordinary Machine was met with vocal protests from her fans, who campaigned against her record label in 2005. Apple's musical style contains elements of jazz and alternative rock.

Born in New York City, Apple is the daughter of singer Diane McAfee and actor Brandon Maggart. Her older sister, Amber, sings cabaret under the stage name Maude Maggart. Her half brother Spencer is a director and directed the video for her single "Parting Gift." Her half brother Garett Maggart starred in the TV series The Sentinel. In addition, her maternal grandparents were Millicent Green, a dancer with the George White's Scandals, a series of 1920s musical revues similar to the Ziegfeld Follies, and Johnny McAfee, a multireedist and vocalist of the big band era; her grandparents met while touring with Johnny Hamp and his orchestra. Apple was raped at the age of twelve, a trauma she would later allude to in songs such as "Sullen Girl."

Dorothy Fields (July 15, 1905 – March 28, 1974) was an American librettist and lyricist.

She wrote over 400 songs for Broadway musicals and films. Along with Ann Ronell, Dana Suesse, Bernice Petkere, and Kay Swift, she was one of the first successful Tin Pan Alley and Hollywood female songwriters.

Fields was born in Allenhurst, New Jersey, and grew up in New York City.

Her father, Lew Fields, an immigrant from Poland, was a vaudeville comedian and later became a Broadway producer. Her career as a professional songwriter took off in 1928, when Jimmy McHugh, who had seen some of her early work, invited her to provide some lyrics for him for Blackbirds of 1928. Fields and McHugh teamed up until 1935. Songs from this period include "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby", "Exactly Like You", and "On the Sunny Side of the Street."

In the mid-1930s, Fields started to write lyrics for films and collaborated with other composers, including Jerome Kern. With Kern, she worked on the movie version of Roberta, and also on their greatest success, Swing Time. The song "The Way You Look Tonight" earned the Fields/Kern team an Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936.

Barrie Chase (born October 20, 1933) is an American actress and dancer originally from Long Island, New York.

When she was six, her father, writer Borden Chase, moved the family to California so he could start his screenwriting career. She grew up in Encino, and studied ballet. She abandoned her dream of being a ballerina in New York to stay in Los Angeles and help support her mother, pianist Lee Keith, after her parents' divorce.

She danced on such live TV programs as The Colgate Comedy Hour and The Chrysler Shower of Stars. It was while she was working as Jack Cole's assistant choreographer at MGM that Fred Astaire asked her to be his dancing partner on An Evening with Fred Astaire. She made four television appearances as Astaire's partner in his television specials between 1958 and 1968. Chase also danced alongside Astaire on the television program Hollywood Palace in 1966. During this period, she also dated Astaire. She appeared on the syndicated talk show version of The Donald O'Connor Show.